"Kitty." I step back so I can see her properly, my hands on her elbows. "Did you just propose?"

"Yes. Sorry, it wasn't very romantic," she says with a laugh. She spreads her hands out and says, "Look where we are, Fliss. I love you. You love me. We're in the wedding capital of the world and we've been in love with each other for way longer than most marriages last anyway. We just didn't realize it."

Maybe it's crazy but I'm just tipsy enough that she's making perfect sense. My smile spreads so wide it hurts my cheeks. "When in Vegas, right?" I look down and say, "We're already dressed for a wedding." When I look up, my eyes lock on Kitty's and I ask, "Is that why you were so keen for me to buy a white dress?"

She presses her lips together. I can see she's trying not to break out in a beam. This girl.

"Kitty!"

"Best to be prepared, right?" she says.

"But it's Saturday. We can't get married on Shabbat."

Kitty gestures to the night sky. "Fliss, the sun went down hours ago. We can do whatever we want."

"Oh my god. Have you been planning this?"

She gives me a coy shrug and says, "I figured it's best to be prepared, right? It's our last night here. We wanted to go out with a bang. We've been pretending to be married for the last couple weeks and I've loved every second. Well, except for the times I convinced myself you weren't into me."

"I can't believe you," I say, laughing. "God, I love you." I hold her face in both hands and kiss her soft lips. "How do we even get married?"

"I didn't plan that far ahead," she says, "but it's Vegas. Everyone gets married in Vegas. How hard can it be?"

Within twenty minutes of Kitty's off the cuff proposal, we're at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau. My heart has turned into a butterfly, flapping in my chest as we fill out the application. As Kitty fills it out, rather. She has a steadier hand. I'm shaking with nerves and anticipation, and I've had more to drink than she has. Not so much that my judgment is incapacitated, but I don't want to misspell my name.

"Campbell-Cohen?" Kitty asks, pen hovering over the page.

"Hmm?"

She taps the section that offers us the choice of a new name to be known as after we're married and says, "Campbell-Cohen, right? We decided that flows better."

"We're really going to be the Campbell-Cohens," I say, an excited laugh bubbling out of me. "This is really real."

"It really is." Kitty writes our names in her neat print. This isn't so crazy for her. She should've been married thirteen days ago; she was already planning to come home as someone's wife. Before this trip, marriage had hardly crossed my mind.

"Kitty and Felicity Campbell-Cohen," I say, trying out the name out loud. "We sound amazing."

It all takes less than an hour. When we leave the bureau at ten p.m. once Kitty's paid the fees, we have one year to get married in the city before it expires. We don't need a year. We don't even need an hour.

"There's a chapel at our hotel," Kitty says, swinging my hand. There's a skip in her step, like she's been filled with helium. I spin her around in the middle of the sidewalk, unable to contain my excitement. "Should we go there?"

"No!" I cry out. "They think we're already married!"

Kitty cackles, her messy curls flying around her head as she twirls. "Oh my god, imagine. We'd be exposed as frauds!"

"They'd call the cops on us. We'd be kicked out of our honeymoon suite."

She gasps and spins into my arms. "That can't happen. We're about to tie the knot, Fliss, we need to consummate our marriage! That giant bed is desperate for a couple of newlyweds to fuck the night away. Or, like, make love all night long."

I hold her against me, her body warm and soft and mine. "There are probably a hundred wedding chapels in this city. We only need one."

It turns out there are more like fifty, and a surprising number are closed by nine p.m. but the one closest to us – literally a hundred feet down the road – is open until midnight, and they welcome last-minute walk-ins up until eleven thirty. For the small price of two hundred and fifty dollars, they will perform our wedding and provide the bouquet, too. It's perfect. Meant to be.

"What're we waiting for?"

"There's something else we need, too," Kitty says.

"Yeah?"

"A witness."

I take out my phone. "I know just the person."

Kitty throws her hand over her mouth when she realizes who I'm talking about. "Holy shit. Yes. She's going to freak the fuck out."

I find Leila in my contacts and hit call. She answers after it rings a couple times. "Fliss, hey, what's up?"

"Where are you right now?" I ask. There's a lot of background noise; I know she's not in her hotel room.

"Just grabbing dinner at the White Castle on Fremont Street," she says. "My flight's at, like, eight o'clock tomorrow morning so I thought I'd get an early night." I hear her yawn. It makes me yawn too.

"Can Kitty and I come meet you there in ten?"

"Sure. Everything okay?"

"Yup. Just need to talk to you," I say.

"Uh oh. Am I in trouble?"

I laugh and say, "Not even remotely. Right. We're on our way. See you soon." To Kitty, I say, "She's at White Castle. It's a couple blocks from here."

She swoons against me, her arm slipping through the space between my elbow and my waist. "Everything's falling into place."

"If she agrees to be our witness."

"Fliss, it's Leila. She's our biggest supporter. She would go get ordained and perform the ceremony if you asked her nicely."

It takes us seven minutes to walk to White Castle, past the chapel we'll soon be returning to. Leila's waiting outside when we get there, her blonde curls loose around her face, and she's already dressed the part in a simple lilac dress and white wedges.

"Hey guys!" She beams and waves and pulls us both into a tight hug. "Why do you look like you've just come from a wedding?"

"Because we're about to go to one," I say. Leila frowns.

"Who's getting married?"

I put my arm around Kitty's shoulders. "Us. If you'll be our witness."

To say Leila freaks out is an understatement.

She shrieks. People turn. They stare. Leila's jumping up and down, her curls bouncing, her eyes wide, her fingers digging into my arm.

"What the actual fuck!? You're getting married?"

"We just got our license," Kitty says, flapping the paper at her. "Kind of a last minute decision but it's our last night in Vegas, so..."

"Oh my fucking god. Oh my fucking god!" Leila yells, her words dissolving into a laugh. "I can't believe it. You're going from fake wives to real ones?"

I hug my fiancée. "Why not? She's been my everything for ten years. Might as well make it forever."

Kitty melts against me. Leila wraps her arms around us both even tighter, cutting off my air supply. Her glee is infectious. I can't scrape the smile from my lips, my cheeks aching with joy.

"So you'll be our witness?" I ask.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Of course I will," she says. "On one condition."

I tilt my head at her. "What's that?"

"That you'll come to Washington. Maybe not next year, maybe not for your anniversary, but someday you guys will come to Amber Creek and we'll go to the national parks."

"I think that can be arranged," Kitty says. She looks at me. "Fliss?"

"Of course it can."

"Alrighty then," Leila says once she's got a hold of herself. "Let's do this shit."

*

"This is not the wedding my mom envisaged for me," Kitty says as we stand at the altar. I took off all my rings when we realized we didn't have any to exchange, and I kept one each. Leila's holding the rest, sitting in the front row with glassy eyes and my jewelry jangling in her cupped hands.

"I don't think my mom's ever bothered to envisage a wedding for me," I say. My eyes are wet as I look at Kitty. She's holding the bouquet, three rich red roses nestled amongst greenery and little white flowers. She's trying not to cry too, tears hanging onto her lash line. One falls, trailing down her cheek. I press my thumb to it, my hand cupping her cheek.

The ceremony is quick. Ten minutes. That's it. That's all it takes for Kitty to become my wife, as I put my favorite ring on her finger and repeat after the officiant: "With this ring, I pledge my constant and abiding love. I join my life with yours, in loving kindness, compassion and faithfulness."

She slides one onto mine, her voice soft when she repeats the same words and she adds, "Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi Li." She lifts her eyes to mine and says, "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine."

I am undone. My lungs and throat are tight with the effort to hold it together long enough for the officiant to tell us to kiss the bride. I pass my glasses to Leila, who stands in the middle of the aisle with Kitty's camera in her hand, capturing every moment of our impromptu wedding.

Our first kiss as a married couple.

A married couple.

It's going to take a while for those words to sink in. I've been calling Kitty my wife for the last two weeks but now she really is. It isn't a joke anymore. This time last week I was preparing myself for a lifetime of unrequited love and now we're fucking married.

My tears finally fall as I kiss her, one hand in her hair at the nape of her neck and the other at the small of her back, pinning to her me as I kiss my wife.

Leila has found rose petal confetti somewhere. She throws it at us as she takes photos with both of our phones and Kitty's camera as we walk hand in hand down the aisle towards her with stained glass windows behind us and soft light overhead. My hand is shaking in Kitty's. Hers is too, the steadiness gone. This is a far cry from the wedding she was supposed to have, the reform Jewish ceremony her mom planned for her and Levi. Religion isn't a huge part of Kitty's life but it was what Levi – or, at least, Levi's parents – wanted and she was happy to go along with it. Because, I know now, her heart was never in it from the start.

Now her heart is joined with mine.

Outside the chapel, Leila shows us the photos she took. She stops on the one of our first kiss as the Campbell-Cohens, our bodies wrapped together, Kitty holding onto me with one hand and the bouquet limp in the other. One foot is kicked up at a perfect right angle, her heels taller than mine so we're exactly the same height.

"Now this," Leila says, "is worthy of the 'gram."

Kitty holds the camera in both hands, staring at the picture. "It's perfect," she murmurs. "We look incredible, Fliss."

"Excuse me, I will only answer to Mrs Campbell-Cohen from now on."

"Oh my god, Mrs. We're Mrses now! Is that a word? Mrses? What's the plural for Mrs?"

"Mesdames," Leila says. "I looked it up. You are Mesdames Campbell-Cohen."

My phone buzzes, interrupting the moment. I plan to ignore it until it buzzes again and I check it, half expecting it to be an email confirmation of the marriage license or the wedding, but it's a string of texts from Sally.

guess who just had ANOTHER date night?

i don't know if my husband is feeling guilty about something but he's pulling out all the stops ;)

looking forward to having you back in the office monday! hope your last night in vegas has been great!

I laugh as I send my reply: you have NO idea

Sally says, what does that mean?? is that a good thing? what happened? tell me everything right now

I send her one of the photos Leila took on my phone – Kitty and me walking through a starburst of confetti – with no explanation, and I switch off my phone. Let Sally go feral over that.

"So." I take Kitty's hand. "What was that you were saying earlier? Something about consummating our marriage? Fucking the night away?"

Leila starts to back away with a devilish grin. "I think I should head off. Have an amazing night. Congratulations, Mesdames Campbell-Cohen. Thank you for letting me be part of your wedding."

"You know this means you have to invite us when you get married," Kitty says with a pointed finger.

"If I ever find love."

"You will," I say. "You are immensely lovable, Leila. Your person is out there." I wrap my arms around my wife's waist and breathe in her scent. "They're probably closer than you think."

*

congratulations to mesdames campbell-cohen!